Federal Bank has set up 100 branches in one day

Private sector lender Federal Bank has set up as many as 100 branches in one day on 10th March 2012, Saturday. This has taken the total branch count of the bank to 938.

“We expect to touch 1,000 branches by June this year,” said Mr R. Sivakumar, Zonal Head – Bangalore Zone, Federal Bank.

. The bank also plans to include 31 new branches in its Bangalore and Chennai zones. “Of these new branches, seven would be in Karnataka, three in Andhra Pradesh and one in Goa,” he said.

Bangalore zone has states namely Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Goa included.

Now report your complain through social media sites too

The customer of Standard Chartered Bank will have a unique option to report their complaints through social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. At present customers can register their complaints through a phone call, e-mail, SMS or by filling up the complaint form.

The Executive Vice-President and Head of Technology and Strategic Transformation at Scope International Pvt Ltd. Ms Jaya Vaidhyanathan said “It could be good or bad we need to react immediately.” This company provides technology solutions to the bank all over the world.

Finance Ministry instruct banks to cover every under-banked district by September 12

With the motive to make banking services accessible to every citizen of the country Finance ministry has instructed the banks to open branches in locations with a population of more than 5,000 in the under-banked districts.

In the mean time banks have already been working under the Financial Inclusion Plan which aims at proving banking facilities to every village in the country with a population of more than 2,000 by March 2012. For the purpose banks have been following different models to cover the villages apart from conventional branch banking method which includes business correspondents, mobile vans etc.

There are still 296 districts in the country which are unbanked and the Reserve Bank of India has asked the banks to bring them under the banking network by opening branches by September 12^th.

Finance Ministry said “Such branches could initially have lesser staff, say 2 persons, with ATM facilities.” It also shared the idea of expanding the branch strength according to the growth in business. Besides, it also appealed to the banks to open as many braches as possible in areas with population of more than 10,000.

Federal Bank now accepts deposits in 9 currencies

To lure more non-resident customers to invest with it, Kerala based private sector lender Federal Bank now accepts non-resident (FCNR) deposits from a broad range of 9 different currencies which includes US, Canadian, Australian, Singaporean and Hong Kong dollars, as well as the British pound, euro, yen and Swiss franc.

The bank has also hiked the interest rates applicable on such fixed deposits, the interest rates on the deposits in US currency now ranges in between 1.94%-2.69% across various maturities.

This facility is effective from 1^st November.

Banks banking on festive season

Lender have joined the race to make the most of the ensuing festive season, recently State Bank of India announced to extend its special home loan scheme where it offers a concession of 0.25% on the home loans till 31^st of December.

Now it is Dena Bank which has announced to lower lending rate applicable on home loan as well as car loan segment by 0.25%, it has also slashed the processing fees by 50%.

These additional benefits will be available from 1^st of October.

Balance inquiry on mobile through fixed codes

Since past decade the banking sector has witnessed manifold development in the customer services. Every new day a new service is being added to the growing range of service provided to facilitate the bank customers.

Moving along the National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI) is under negotiations with the telecom operators to provide services on USSD (Unstructured supplementary Service Data) message, which would allow the bank customers to make non-financial transactions like balance enquiry by dialing a specific code through their mobile.

These transactions when made through other bank’s ATM cause monetary loss to the parent bank as for each transaction the bank has make some payment to the other bank which create unnecessary monetary loss for the bank with this facility when implemented both banks as well as customer will be benefitted.

The Managing Director of NPCI Mr. A.P. Hota said "These transactions are free for the customer if it is within the five transactions a month limit. But their banks have to pay the bank that owns the ATM between Rs 5 to Rs 8 for every enquiry."

He also said "We need to leverage mobile technology and increase awareness and discourage balance enquiry at ATMs."